Sen. Kelly presses EPA on Miami smelter exemption 

Miami’s air quality became the focus of a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing last Wednesday. 

During the hearing on the 2027 Environmental Protection Agency budget, Sen. Mark Kelly questioned EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin about an exemption granted to Freeport-McMoRan’s copper smelter in Miami. The exemption allows the facility to delay compliance with new federal emissions-control requirements established in 2024, known as the Copper Smelter Rule, or Copper Rule. 

President Trump issued a proclamation in October exempting primary copper smelters from compliance with the updated standards for two years. There are only two such smelters in the United States — one in Miami and one in Salt Lake City. The proclamation stated the new requirements rely on technology that does not exist in a “commercially demonstrated or cost-effective form.”

According to data reported to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, the Miami smelter emitted more than 11.6 tons of lead and 2.5 tons of arsenic in 2024. 

“That smelter is located about a mile from an elementary school, and it’s less than half a mile from a church and a residential neighborhood,” Kelly said during the hearing.

However, in response to a query from Globe Miami Times after the hearing, Linda Hayes, vice president of communications for Freeport McMoRan, said that air quality data from both the state and the company consistently shows lead levels around the smelter well below the limits established by EPA.

Kelly said during the hearing that, under the Clean Air Act, the presidential exemption would be permissible if the required technology didn’t exist, but contended that it does and has been used for decades. 

He said the 2024 rule would require the installation of a baghouse, a pollution control device designed to reduce lead and arsenic emissions. Similar technology is already in use at the Salt Lake City smelter, he said. 

“It's basically just a big vacuum cleaner bag that would cost the mining company Freeport-McMoRan about $60 million to install,” Kelly said. “That's for a company that had a net profit of 2.7 billion dollars last year.” 

However, Hayes said the smelter’s air‑quality controls currently include an existing baghouse and wet electrostatic precipitators. 

“These reflect significant investments made over many years to comply with environmental regulations and manage sulfur dioxide, lead and other regulated emissions,” she said. 

She emphasized that the exemption does not eliminate or change existing emissions limits or monitoring requirements, or authorize any increase in emissions, and that the smelter continues to comply with the regulatory standards in place before the 2024 Copper Rule.

During the Senate hearing, Kelly also argued that there was no public process involved in the granting of the exemption to Freeport. 

“Last fall the company requested and received a presidential exemption from these requirements through a new process that was set up by your EPA where a company could just email your staff and request an exemption, no public process,” Kelly told Zeldin.  

The New York Times, and more recently, AZ Family, have reported on the emails exchanged between the EPA and Freeport McMoRan regarding the exemption. 

Hayes said that the option to file for a presidential exemption is authorized by Congress under the Clean Air Act. 

The exemption provides the EPA time to review and reconsider aspects of the Copper Rule, she said, which Freeport has petitioned the EPA to do, and provides the company additional time to plan for future compliance.

“I don't have all the information about the company, the technology, and the emissions that you're talking about,” Zeldin told Kelly at the end of the hearing. “As I sit here, it's the first time that anyone has raised it, but I'm happy to follow up.”